International mascot Trip E. Collie – love and theft at FWA – Newsdump (4/16/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Tips are always welcome. 

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Media and Fandom News

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Huge French festival features San Francisco Bay Area furry and Good Boy, Trip E. Collie, as national poster dog!

FOURVIÈRE NIGHTS is a festival for theater, dance and music in Lyon, France – a center for French gastronomy and classic architecture. Look who’s on it now:

Trip Collie was very surprised when the festival picked him as their real-life mascot.  He’s on their website front page, and buildings all over France.  He says: “The festival has run for 70 years… runs June 2 – July 31. It has several hundred thousand attendees!”   For 2015, it’s featuring: “Björk to Ben Harper, to Iggy Pop, Joan Baez, Patti Smith, Robert Plant, the Chedid family, Christine & The Queens, Véronique Sanson, Bartabas and Florence Foresti.”

How did they decide to feature a furry from California?  I recognize Trip’s photo from Burning Man – they must be calling on the spirit of that festival.  And who can deny the adorable appeal of Hyena Girls’s suit making skills?  I can personally rate him as a 5-star cuddler.  You don’t get that by seeing pop stars from afar. Yay furries!  (And wow, that would be an amazing destination… Lyon had the best food I had in a visit to four parts of Europe.)

“What It’s Like to Attend a Furry Convention” – in Men’s Health magazine.

Researcher Debra Soh’s article was praised by furries who said“It’s a broken record at this point, “Thought they were weird, turned out to be awesome.”  Debra recently appeared on this blog with a supportive statement: “A Lesson Everyone Can Learn From Furries.”

Hip hop artist Killer Mike at Furry Weekend Atlanta.Screen Shot 2015-04-15 at 4.01.19 AM

Killer Mike does music, acting, and “outspoken social activism” from a home base in Atlanta.  Apparently I’m lame because I didn’t know him before?  Now I do because he was tough enough to proudly hang with furries.  Nice.

Skypro Fursuits suffer vehicle and trailer theft at FWA.

Fans worried about loss of popular suits such as Telephone, but those were safe. Equipment was lost. April 12 update: “Car and trailer still missing and no word for the police. I dont think will ever be seeing our car again. :(“

Further Confusion 2015 covered by Science Fiction/San Francisco fanzine.

The writer reviews “one of my favorite conventions.” (PDF download, page 42.)

Furries: A Documentary – seeks funding on Kickstarter.

Production is complete and it’s just seeking post-production help.  It’s a great reason to check out what it will do with a modest goal of $2,500.

DJ contest: Furry is very close to winning, needs votes by April 17.

“Hey Patch! I was wondering if I could have your help~I’m in a massive DJ contest (Already in 2nd) and if I could have your vote I’d get to open for Dillon Francis and play in front of 13,000 people! It would take 2 seconds to clink on the link and vote for my mix; It would literally mean the world to me”. Snow Tack – EDM mashup – LIC Demo | Wavo

Visual Fursuit Maker Database offers help for better discovery.

134 makers are represented in vivid fluffy pictures that speak a thousand words about the awesome creativity of this fandom.  It’s a good, but far from perfect resource, limited by Tumblr’s crappy search features.  The best resource is waiting to be made – a visual one that allows search by name, price, location, open or not, an alpha list, or more than just a few tags.

Fred Patten sent a note about lesser-known furry literature:

“Roz Gibson recently posted this list with cover scans of some furry novels. She has gotten lots of comments like, “I’m a fan of furry fiction, and I never heard of any of these”, and, “I would love to see your entire database!”

I have been indexing my online furry book reviews and articles off and on for some time. I have over 350 indexed by author and by title so far, with many more still to go. I’ll send you what I have so far as a progress report…”

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Further fun

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Sniffing butts saves lives.

“Spectacular” new research finds dogs can detect prostate cancer in urine in 98 per cent of cases.”  Sign me up.

Five Nights At Freddies To Become Full Motion Picture.

Warner Brothers jumps into writing the “Furry death machine” story.

Shirtless Robin Hood gets all wet for you.

My first “man” crush!

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